Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item :http://hdl.handle.net/2066/82597

Display more details

Subject:

Governance and Places

Organization:

Milieu maatschappijwetenschappen

Journal title:

Forest Policy and Economics

Volume:

vol. 11

Issue:

iss. 3

Page start:

p. 202

Page end:

p. 208

Abstract:

Over the past thirty years, forest policy in the Netherlands has almost entirely been integrated into nature policy. This process of ‘de-institutionalisation’ is surprising in view of widely accepted theories of institutional stability and ‘path dependency’. The process is investigated in this paper along the four dimensions of the policy arrangement approach: discourse, power, rules and actors. It is argued that a discursive shift, moving the focus from production forest to ‘forest as part of nature’ and fuelled by a number of underlying factors, lies at the heart of the process. In concordance with this shift, advocates of timber autarky lost power in favour of ‘nature advocates’. A more diverse set of actors became involved in forest policy, also reflecting a more general trend in Dutch politics towards greater openness and the erosion of neo-corporatist rules. Thus, changes in all four dimensions of the policy arrangement worked into one direction. This may explain the unusually quick and radical ‘de-institutionalisation’ of Dutch forest policy.